Rockies Journal: Bullpen has gone from worst to excellent. Will it last?

Bud Black is relentlessly positive but is also a realist, especially about his pitching staff.

The Rockies manager knew in spring training that the team’s bullpen would be its weakest link. He was right.

As the Rockies entered the weekend with just 15 games remaining, the bullpen had the worst ERA (5.36), worst WHIP (1.54), and highest batting average against (.281) in the majors. Its 459 strikeouts were the fewest in the National League and third-fewest in the majors.

But, as Black likes to say, the worm might be turning, thanks to a cadre of young, hard-throwing pitchers and the rejuvenation of veteran Tyler Kinley. Colorado’s bullpen, historically awful earlier in the season, has been excellent in the final month of the season.

Entering the weekend, Rockies relievers had posted a 2.16 ERA with no home runs allowed over their last 12 games. The late-inning meltdowns that decimated the team earlier in the season have ceased. At least for now.

“Those are good signs, what we’re seeing out of the bullpen,” Black said during the Rockies’ recent 4-5 road trip. “It bodes well for the future. All these guys that have come up are doing a nice job keeping the ball down, changing speeds and using their secondary pitches, along with velocity. So it’s promising.”

But to see where the Rockies think they’re going, it’s necessary to remember where they were.

Earlier this season, the bullpen qualified for federal disaster relief.

The dam broke in Colorado’s 11-9 loss to the Dodgers on June 18 at Coors Field. The Rockies led 9-4 going into the ninth inning but gave up seven runs in the top half of the inning, marking the sixth time the Rockies entered the ninth inning with a lead and allowed five or more runs to lose that lead. That gave Colorado the dubious record for most blown leads of that type in a single season in baseball’s modern era.

It couldn’t get worse, right? But it did. On Aug. 27, at Coors, the lowly Marlins scored five runs in the top of the ninth inning to stun the Rockies, 9-8. At that point, the Rockies’ 7.44 ninth-inning ERA was the highest by any National League team in any inning over the last 50 years.

The previous record holder? The 2023 Rockies, who posted a 7.17 ERA in the ninth inning.

Now, back to Black’s vision of a “promising future.”

His optimism stems from the emergence of the new kids on the block at 20th and Blake: right-handers Angel Chivilli, Seth Halvorsen, Victor Vodnik, Jeff Criswell and Jaden Hill, and lefty Luis Peralta. And from the 33-year-old Kinley, who’s taken over the closer role by turning his vertical slider into a devastating pitch.

Vodnik, Halvorsen and Hill have all hit 100 mph with their fastball, and all of Colorado’s young relievers can top 95 mph. But it’s not just their high heat that has Black bullish. He likes the fearlessness and aggressiveness of the young relievers, along with the fact that they aren’t walking a boatload of batters.

How long they can sustain that attitude and maintain their success will be a huge question for 2025 and beyond. Relievers are notoriously mercurial. But for the here and now, here’s what they’re doing:

• Kinley struggled mightily to command his fastball/slider combination earlier in the season, hence his 5.89 ERA. But he now has a career-high 12 saves in 13 chances and has held opponents scoreless in 22 of his last 25 games, posting a 2.45 ERA. Will he be next year’s closer? Possibly, though he’ll have competition.

• Vodnik has pitched 66 2/3 relief innings, sixth-most in the NL, and tied for the most among rookie pitchers. Despite a stint on the injured list, he’s thrown the most innings by a Rockies rookie reliever since Tommy Kahnle in 2014 (68 2/3). Vodnik’s given up only five homers compared to 11 by Kinley.

The Rockies love Vodnik’s ability to put adversity in his rearview mirror. He has nine saves and three blown saves.  However, his strikeout rate (8.1 K’s per nine innings) is less dynamic than Kinley’s (10.1).

• Halvorsen, 24, is an enticing pitcher who pairs a triple-digit fastball with a confounding changeup. He threw just one pitch in his major league debut, but he dominated the Orioles in his next outing. After throwing a four-seam, 100-mph fastball to Jackson Holliday, he fed Holliday three consecutive changeups for his first big-league strikeout. He threw three more changeups against Gunnar Henderson to force a groundout and then powered his way past All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman with four 100-plus fastballs before getting Rutschman to pop out on a changeup.

Halvorsen has only appeared in six games (5 2/3 innings) but has struck out five of the 19 batters he’s faced. It remains to be seen if he can be a late-game reliever, but the Rockies love his fastball-slider punch.

• Chivilli, 22, has been lit up a couple of times, but he’s been unscored upon in 13 of his last 17 appearances since being recalled from Triple-A on July 30. Over that span, he has a 2.41 ERA with 16 strikeouts vs. just four walks. He hasn’t shown the strikeout power of some of the other young relievers (6.8 Ks per nine), but his sinker/changeup combination is producing weak contact.

• Criswell, 25, averages 95.7 mph with his fastball, which is hot, but he needs to keep the ball down. He did that against the Marlins on Aug. 28 when he struck out five of the six batters he faced. However, three days earlier he gave up home runs to three consecutive Yankees batters in the Bronx. Granted, the trio was Juan Soto, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, but Criswell learned some hard lessons that day.

His 3.60 ERA and 11 strikeouts vs. four walks are impressive, but the sample size is tiny (eight games, 10 innings).

• The Rockies desperately need a quality lefty in their ‘pen, especially with the injured Lucas Gilbreath facing an uncertain future. They hope Peralta is that guy.

His rise has been meteoric. Peralta began the year in Single-A with the Pirates and came to Colorado in a deadline deal for veteran lefty Jalen Beeks. He has yet to surrender a run in eight games (7 1/3 innings) with the Rockies. He’s given up just three hits and walked three while striking out nine. It’s an impressive big-league splash.

• Hill, a second-round pick out of LSU in 2021, has a miniature sample size at the big-league level (just two scoreless innings), but his fastball/slider/changeup combo is intriguing. As Black likes to warn, “There’s a walk in there,” but if Hill can improve his command, he could evolve into a back-end reliever.

As is always the case with Rockies relievers, this crew faces many “what ifs” and “yeah, buts.” How teams begin adjusting to them will be a major test. So will their durability and the challenges of pitching at Coors Field.

But during another lost season, the bullpen has at least shown that it might be part of the Rockies’ solution instead of their biggest problem.

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